From Ohio History Central

In 1886, the Ohio General Assembly authorized the creation of the Ohio Soldiers' and Sailors' Home at Sandusky, Ohio. The home was created to provide for Ohio's indigent honorably discharged veterans of the American Civil War. The institution's first board of trustees selected a site just south of Sandusky, Ohio. The city government agreed to provide streetcar service and gas, water, and electric power to the site.

On November 19, 1888, the first seventeen Civil War veterans arrived at the Ohio Soldiers' and Sailors' Home. Originally, the home provided housing and food for the veterans. Beginning in 1950, the institution also provided nursing home care. As the United States became involved in other conflicts, the Ohio Soldiers' and Sailors' Home admitted honorably discharged veterans from these wars as well. Veterans from the following conflicts in the twentieth century have resided in the home: the Mexican Border War, World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the Persian Gulf War. The home also has been opened to veterans of all military branches, including the U.S. Army, the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Marines, the U.S. Coast Guard, and the National Guard. After 1969, women veterans could also seek assistance at the institution.

By 2005, more than fifty thousand veterans had resided at what was now known as the Ohio Veterans Home. In that same year, approximately 660 veterans lived at the Ohio Veterans Home, including 427 people in the nursing home component. In 2003, a second Ohio Veterans Home was opened in Georgetown, Ohio. If a veteran is destitute, he or she now receives free care at the Ohio Veterans Home. Otherwise, the home charges a fee based on a person's wealth. Both the Sandusky and Georgetown sites are operated by the Ohio Veterans Home Agency.

References

Gilkey, Elliot Howard. The Ohio Hundred Year Book: A Hand-Book of the Public Men and Public Institutions of Ohiofrom the Formation of the North-WestTerritory (1787) to July 1, 1901. Columbus, OH: Fred J. Heer, State Printer, 1901.

Official Roster of the Soldiers of the State of Ohio in the War of Rebellion, 1861-1866. Akron, OH: The Werner Company, 1893.